Communist Manifesto

Section IV. Position of the Communists in Relation
to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

Section II has made clear the relations of
the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the
Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. 1

The Communists fight
for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the
momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the
present, they also represent and take care of 2 the future of that movement. In
France the Communists ally themselves with the Social-Democrats, against the conservative and
radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a
critical position in regard to phrases and illusions traditionally
handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland they support the Radicals, without
losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic
elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly
of radical bourgeois.

In Poland they support the party that
insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national
emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in
1846. 3

In Germany they fight with the
bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the
absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty
bourgeoisie. 4

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instil
into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the
hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that
the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the
bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie
must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order
that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight
against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany,
because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is
bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European
civilisation, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of
England was in the seventeenth, and of France in the eighteenth
century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but
the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every
revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order
of things.

In all these movements they bring to the front, as the
leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its
degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and
agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and
aims. They openly declare that their ends can he attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling
classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win.

WORKING MEN OF All COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Footnote provided by Engels

Social Democrats

The party then
represented in Parliament by Ledru-Rollin, in literature by Louis
Blanc, in the daily press by the Réorme. The name of
Social-Democracy signified, with these its inventors, a section of the
Democratic or Republican party more or less tinged with
Socialism. [Note by Engels to the English edition of 1888.]

The party in France which at that time called itself
Socialist-Democratic was represented in political life by Ledru-Rollin
and in literature by Louis Blanc; thus it differed immeasurably from
present-day German Social-Democracy. [Note by Engels to the German
edition of 1890.] [return]

Notes by the editor of the 1976 edition

[Refers to note 38:] Young America - an
organization of American craftsmen and workers; it formed the nucleus of the
mass National Reform Association founded in 1845. In the second half
of the 1840s the Association agitated for land reform, proclaiming as
its aim free allotment of a plot of 160 acres to every working man; it
came out against slave-owning planters and land profiteers. It also
put forward demands for a ten-hour working day, abolition of slavery,
of the standing army, etc. Many German emigrant craftsmen, including
members of the League of the Just, took part in the movement headed by
the National Reform Association. By 1846 the movement among the
German workers began to subside. One of the reasons for this was the
activity of Kriege's group whose "true socialism" diverted the
German emigrants from the struggle for democratic aims. [return]

The words "and take care of" were added
in the English edition of 1888. [return]

[Refers to note 55:] The reference is to the
national liberation uprising in the Cracow republic which by the
decision of the Congress of Vienna was controlled jointly by Austria,
Russia and Prussia - who had partitioned Poland at the end of the
eighteenth century. The seizure of power in Cracow by the insurgents
on February 22, 1846 and the establishment of a National Governent of
the Polish republic, which issued a manifesto abolishing feudal
services, were part of the plan for a general uprising in the Polish
lands whose main inspirers were the revolutionary democrats (Dembowski
and others). In March the Cracow uprising, lacking active support in
other parts of Poland, was crushed by the forces of Austria and
tsarist Russia; in November 1846, Austria, Prussia and Russia signed a
treaty incorporating the "free town of Cracow" into the
Austrian Empire. [return]

In the German editions the end of this sentence
reads: "against the absolute monarchy, the feudal landowners and
philistinism [Kleinbürgerei]." [return]